Weekend Unwind – The Belated Edition

Sometimes despite our best intentions, the world and time gets away from us. I had such great intentions last week. I was going to get all of my posts done and scheduled before we left for our trip to Austin Friday morning. And then if I couldn’t get that done, I was going to at least have things ready to roll so I could be updating with minimal time during our trip. And then I was going to find time to at least throw up some photo posts. None of that happened. Sadly.

It all started when my work computer got taken from me to reverse an update that I had installed. It was supposed to have been back to me that same afternoon – Wednesday afternoon – but it wasn’t. And that’s when things began to go off the rails for me. An evening of not getting things done turned into a mad scramble to not quite get things taken care of. In the process of reversing that update, all of the photos that I was working to get processed for the site were lost. (they weren’t a total loss – I have most of them on my home computer. And a word about why I have those photos on my work computer in the first place – I live away from home during the week. I need to be able to do work for my website during the week, and my employer doesn’t mind)

When I got home to the Coast Thursday night, I tried to get things caught up. I think I did OK…sorta. I managed to edit all of the photos for the Photo Friday post, and I even uploaded them to my site. I didn’t however put them in the format that I wanted to. I was going to leave that for later that evening. But Sweet Husband wanted me to spend time with him. He wanted to feel like he mattered as much as my photos and my writing and the efforts I’m making to connect to others online.

By the time everything was all said and done, I was up until 3:30 in the morning Friday. And I crawled out of bed at 5:00 so I could write and finish last minute preparations for us to be under way by 7:30. I still didn’t get my post organized the way I wanted it to be. I intended to do it some time during the drive, but I found I was a bit too foggy to think straight, on top of my data connection being spotty and the WordPress app being a little too unwieldy to do the things that I wanted to do. So nothing happened.

We had a smooth ride over…despite the 45 minute train delay in Giddings, TX. Sweet Husband was supposed to do his work during the ride, but he elected not to. That was fine with me because I was a little worried about how I was going to manage driving on an hour and a half of sleep. I did wind up driving from Jennings, LA to just past Houston. SH left for part of that, and about had kittens while I was driving through Houston.

SH and I have completely different driving styles. He’s very aggressive – like his daddy – who’s driving I don’t really particularly care for either. It’s fast and quickly weaves in and out of traffic. SH also suffers from road rage. If people aren’t moving fast enough, he yells and curses and is generally unpleasant. It’s so bad that my mother – the professional truck driver – prefers that I drive when we pick her up because she says that SH’s driving scares her and makes her nervous. Recall that I’m 6 years older than SH, and that in addition to many more years of driving experience, I’ve driven across country more often than he has (the first time when I was 16 and had my license for just 2-3 weeks). I can handle traffic. It doesn’t freak me out. Houston traffic didn’t freak me out. I learned a long time ago that it’s usually better to just roll with it. We’re all stuck. There’s not much point in getting upset or trying to make it go faster. It’s not going to make a difference.

What does make me nervous is when SH gets snaggly and exasperated with me when I’m driving. The big sighs and the trying to tell me what to do? I can do without all that non-sense.

Saturday was Uncle Bubba’s wedding, and before the happy occasion, SH and made our way to downtown Austin to do a wee bit of exploring. We didn’t have nearly enough time to spend there; we’re already planning a return trip. SH even said, “I could see us living here.” Ummmmm…well. Alrighty then. We made our way to the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue and then drove by the capital, but that’s about all we had time to do.

After a quick lunch, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding, and then it was off to the wedding at Chapel Dulcinea. What a wonderful location for a wedding! I got some great photos that I’ll bring to you later in the week (if all goes according to plan). Sweet Husband cleans up well, doesn’t he?

We had a great time with Uncle Bubba and his lovely new wife. We can’t wait to go back and hang out with them again…and drink more wine 😉

The drive back home was also uneventful except for my extreme fatigue. I’m not sure what is going on, but for the last month to 6 weeks, I’ve experienced some terrible fatigue. Now I know you’re thinking, Jen – Thursday night you got an hour and a half of sleep. You routinely get 4-5 hours of sleep a night…if you’re lucky. Are you surprised you’re tired? Well. I’m not particularly surprised I’m tired, but I’m surprised I’m this exhausted for this long. All I can say is that it’s different. And I slept Friday and Saturday nights. Good, long sleeps. (Long for me) For me to be that dangerously tired means that something is wrong. Even with coffee and red bull, I was frighteningly tired.

I drove from just outside Austin to Beaumont and felt like hell the entire time. I finally quit in Beaumont. If SH hadn’t woken up (he wasn’t feeling well), I was going to ask, his mom to drive because I knew it wasn’t safe for me to continue. The rest of the drive was essentially torture for me. Most of the time, my muscles were spasming so badly that I was jerking around in my seat. At one point it was so painful that I was crying. It is something that is on my list of things to talk to my doctor about when I see him next…which I need to schedule since I missed it last week. *sigh*

All in all, it was a good weekend, and I’m glad we went to Texas. It was great to connect with SH’s family and to go somewhere that we haven’t been before. I can’t wait to go back!

Weekly Intentions

Because it is a new week, it’s time to set the intentions for the next seven (or six as the case may be) days.

Professional

Get my grades done

Make a decision about a possible new position

Personal

Walk every day – SH and are talking about our health and agree…again…it’s time to start. Again.

Learn how to use Trello. It looks like a great tool, but I’m struggling with finding a great tutorial for setting it up.

Find Halloween costumes – I’m not the biggest Halloween fan but we have a party to go to Friday night where costumes are mandatory.

Make a decision about NaNoWriMo – I’ve already decided I can’t do 50,000 words, but I’m seriously thinking about trying to do half that.

Blog

Decide on the theme I’m going with and make the leap

Set up the editorial calendar for November

Do research for a bi-weekly feature I want to set up

I think that’s good for a short week.

How was your weekend? What are you up to and planning this week? Let me hear from you!

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I'm a teacher, writer, and photographer capturing the magical moments of life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast - putting my experience as a teacher and educational staff developer to work crafting stories that chronicle an experience well-lived.

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